Net neutrality divides MEPs

Although MEPs are expected on Monday (24 February) to back wide-ranging reforms of the European Union’s telecoms sector, they remain divided over requiring internet providers to respect uncompromising rules on net neutrality.

Pilar del Castillo Vera, the centre-right Spanish MEP leading the European Parliament’s work on the reforms, has sought more flexible definitions of net neutrality that would, for example, require internet providers to treat only “equivalent traffic” equally.

But a coalition of liberal, Green and centre-left MEPs has held out, arguing that internet providers, including telecoms operators, should not be permitted to exercise any discrimination over internet traffic. The concern is that, as mobile operators diversify and provide more of their own content and apps, they may reserve the highest internet speed for their own products.

European telecoms regulators confirmed in March 2012 that telecoms operators regularly degrade the internet connection for services such as Skype, which allows users to call phones over the internet and is thus a competitor to those same telecoms operators.

Priorities

“It is essential to maintain this priority of a basic internet that allows choice to all”, Catherine Trautmann, a centre-left French MEP arguing for full net neutrality, told European Voice. She estimated that her counter-proposal could be carried in a vote unless a compromise can be agreed beforehand.

But telecoms operators have warned that strict net neutrality rules will stifle innovation and limit their ability to offer new services to business customers. These rules could make it more difficult for operators to provide high quality IPTV – internet television – or specialised services for clients such as financial institutions or hospitals, said a telecoms source. A spokesperson for the European Commission said it could live with “some tightenings” of the rules on net neutrality.

MEPs also remain divided on how to implement a ban on roaming charges that would come into force as from December 2015. A second telecoms source denounced the ban as highly political ahead of Parliament elections in May.

The telecoms reforms, which were published in September, aim to create a single European telecoms market in order to bolster investment in the sector and improve the EU market’s competitiveness. They have drawn mixed reactions from industry, regulators, member states and MEPs. BEREC, the European agency of national regulators – created by the last round of telecoms legislation in 2009 – has sharply criticised the proposals, fearing they would give the Commission more powers, at its own expense. Del Castillo Vera said in her draft report that several important elements of the proposal needed “a deeper, structured public consultation and thorough ex-ante assessment”.

MEPs on the committee for industry, transport, research and energy are expected to back her amendments to the Commission’s proposal, subject to a number of compromises agreed among political groups. Key amendments include maintaining BEREC’s independence from the Commission, and a dilution of the proposed single authorisation for telecoms operators in the EU.